Max Holloway gets his hand raised after beating Calvin Kattar at UFC Fight Island 7.
Max Holloway willing to step up for UFC 257; third fight with Volkanovski still an option
Max Holloway dominated his fight against Calvin Kattar on the UFC’s first ever card to be broadcasted on ABC and now he’s already gearing up for another fight.
Next weekend UFC 257 goes down on Fight Island and the card will be watched by Khabib Nurmagomedov to possibly determine his next opponent as Conor McGregor, Dustin Poirier, Dan Hooker and Michael Chandler are all the card.
If for some reason one of those four fighters cannot make the walk to the octagon that night, Holloway wants to step in there and enter the conversation as a possibly opponent for the undefeated Nurmagomedov.
“I’m here until next week. If something happens in this crazy, wild sport, don’t be surprised, man,” Holloway said in his post-fight press conference. “Tune in next week to a huge pay-per-view. There’s a bunch of surprises happening.”
Holloway was scheduled to fight Nurmagomedov at UFC 223 in 2018. The fight was originally supposed to featured Tony Ferguson and Nurmagomedov, but Ferguson was forced out after injuring his knee. Holloway stepped up on a few days notice, but the New York Athletic Commission, who oversaw the fight, pulled Holloway from the fight due to Holloway’s tough weight cut.
Nearly three years has passed since then, but Holloway still hasn’t forgotten it and wouldn’t mind being reinserting to the Nurmagomedov conversation again.
“We’ll see what happens, even with Khabib, you know?” Holloway said. “Khabib is saying that he wants something that’s super interesting. Maybe I pushed him over the edge a little bit. We had one of the best press conferences in the world, I think. We just didn’t have the fight. We could fill that in if he wanted to.”
Of course Holloway would still like another crack at the featherweight title. Over the summer at UFC 251 Holloway lost a narrow spilt decision to Alexander Volkanovski. While Volkanovski is now up 2-0 on Holloway, a third fight is in the cards according to UFC president Dana White.
“I think we have to (give Holloway a third shot),” White told reporters, including MMA Junkie, during Saturday’s post-fight news conference. “I think we have to. I mean, when you’re the champion, you have the top five guys in the world gunning at you. When you’re the No. 1 contender in the world, you’ve got the top 10 guys in the world. Sometimes, No. 8 is more dangerous than No. 3. Tonight, he fought a bad dude that a lot of people thought was going to beat him. He went out and treated him like No. 6, so he did what he needed to do in spectacular fashion tonight. I think that he deserves to fight Volkanovski again.”
Volkanovski is rumored to be fighting Brian Ortega in March, but the fight has not been made official.
